Amazon to open market in second-hand MP3s and e-books

A new market for second-hand digital downloads could let us hold virtual yard sales of our ever-growing piles of intangible possessions

WHY buy second-hand? For physical goods, the appeal is in the price – you don't mind the creases in a book or rust spots on a car if it's a bargain. Although digital objects never lose their good-as-new lustre, their very nature means there is still uncertainty about whether we actually own them in the first place, making it tricky to set up a second-hand market. Now an Amazon patent for a system to support reselling digital purchases could change that.

Amazon's move comes after last year's European Union ruling that software vendors cannot stop customers from reselling their products. But without technical support, the ruling has had no impact. In Amazon's system, customers will keep their digital purchases – such as e-books or music – in a personal data store in the cloud that only they can access, allowing them to stream or download the content.

This part is like any cloud-based digital locker except that the customer can resell previous purchases by passing the access rights to another person. Once the transaction is complete, the seller will lose access to the content. Any system for reselling an e-book, for example, would have to ensure that it is not duplicated in the transaction. That means deleting any copies the seller may have lying around on hard drives, e-book readers, and other cloud services, since that would violate copyright.

Amazon may be the biggest company to consider a second-hand market, but it is not the first. ReDigi, based in Boston, has been running a resale market for digital goods since 2011. After downloading an app, users can buy a song on ReDigi for as little as 49 cents that would costs 99 cents new on iTunes.

When users want to sell an item, they upload it to ReDigi's servers via a mechanism that ensures no copy is made during the transfer. Software checks that the seller does not retain a copy. Once transferred, the item can be bought and downloaded by another customer. ReDigi is set to launch in Europe in a few months.

Digital items on ReDigi are cheaper because they are one-offs. If your hard drive crashes and you lose your iTunes collection you can download it again. But you can only download an item from ReDigi once – there is no other copy. That is the trade-off that makes a second-hand digital market work: the risk justifies the price. The idea has ruffled a few feathers – last year EMI sued ReDigi for infringement of copyright. A judge denied the claim, but the case continues.

Used digital goods can also come with added charm. ReDigi tracks the history of the items traded so when you buy something, you can see who has owned it and when. ReDigi's second-hand marketplace has grown into a social network. According to ReDigi founder John Ossenmacher, customers like seeing who has previously listened to a song. "It's got soul like an old guitar," he says. "We've introduced this whole feeling of connectedness."

It could be good for business too if the original vendors, such as iTunes, were to support resale and take a cut of the resell price. Nevertheless, Amazon's move bucks the industry trend. Microsoft's new Xbox, for example, is expected not to work with second-hand games.

But the market could change rapidly now that Amazon's weight is behind this, says Ossenmacher. "The industry is waking up."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Old MP3, one careful owner"

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Britain's top Catholic in 'inappropriate acts' row: report

LONDON: Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric, who is due to vote on Pope Benedict XVI's successor, has been reported to the Vatican over claims of inappropriate behaviour, the Observer reported on Sunday.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, contests allegations by three priests and a former priest which were sent to Rome a week before Pope Benedict's resignation on February 11.

The four claimants, from the diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh in Scotland, reported to nuncio Antonio Mennini, the Vatican's ambassador to Britain, that O'Brien had committed "inappropriate acts" going back 33 years.

One priest claims he received unwanted attention from the cardinal after a late-night drinking session. Another alleges that O'Brien used night prayers as cover for inappropriate contact, according to the paper.

O'Brien has a vote in the forthcoming papal conclave.

The claimants, who are demanding the cleric's resignation, are worried that their report will not be properly addressed if he is allowed to travel to Rome.

"It (the church) tends to cover up and protect the system at all costs," said one of the complainants, according to quotes published by the Observer newspaper.

"The church is beautiful, but it has a dark side and that has to do with accountability. If the system is to be improved, maybe it needs to be dismantled a bit."

O'Brien, who is due to retire next month, has angered the gay community with his conservative stance on homosexuality. He was named "bigot of the year" last year by the rights charity Stonewall.

He recently said that same-sex marriages would be "harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of those involved" and has long voiced opposition to gay adoption.

- AFP/jc

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The Facebook mistakes people make after a date

February can make people excitable.

A new year is barely old. Hope springs eternal. And then there's Valentine's Day to add a little piquancy to their emotional state.

Sometimes, though, lovers suffer from a certain lack of self-control. This can manifest itself on society's everyday manifest: Facebook.

I was moved, therefore, that someone had taken the time to list the major faux pas that occur when social contact accelerates beyond decent norms.

I am lovingly grateful to Ranker, which has taken it upon itself to reduce the rancor that might be caused by Facebooked overenthusiasm -- the site has listed behavior to avoid.

Apparently the worst thing you can do after meeting someone in whose charm and personality you might be interested is to immediately send them a Facebook friend request.

This might seem obvious to some.

You don't necessarily have any idea what the other person might really think of you. You know, inside their heads.

And, as Ranker wisely offers: "Now you've just given yourself something else to obsess over: 'Why hasn't my friend request been accepted? Why is it taking so long? Did they even see it?!'

And from one small click, a whole new series of sessions with your shrink is created.

It seems, though, that the human imagination has found many more ways of ruining the course of true love on Facebook.

People apparently pore over their new date's Facebook page, seeking secrets to their true friends, thoughts, and, who knows, other objects of affection.

Some devolve into what seems utterly psychotic behavior, such as liking old photos of their new potential paramour. Who does that? Twisted humans, that's who.

But Facebook offers so many more opportunities for self-destruction.

There's revealing too much in your status update. Sample: "I just went on the best date ever with Marie Dupree and her sexy knees."

More Technically Incorrect

Some people, though, go even further and attempt to insert themselves into comments on their love-object's Facebook page, should they already be Facebook friends. Sample: "You look so WONDERFUL when you're saluting the sun, Shoshanna. Can't wait until we do some saluting together!!"

No, it doesn't end there.

The Facebook gauche end up stalking every second of their new friend's Timeline. ("She dated a clown in 2008? Why would she DO that?")

Worse, there are apparently instances of enthusiasts who get so carried away that they start friending the families of their new objects of affection. ("Hi, Mrs. Aziel, you don't know me, but your daughter and I...." Oh, you finish the sentence.)

Facebook offers so many avenues of potential despair that there is only one way that you can use it to avoid complication, pain, sorrow, heartbreak, sleepless nights, and that bottomless feeling of lost opportunity: Don't go anywhere near it.

Top 10 Facebook Mistakes to Avoid After 1st Dates

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Elderly Abandoned at World's Largest Religious Festival

Every 12 years, the northern Indian city of Allahabad plays host to a vast gathering of Hindu pilgrims called the Maha Kumbh Mela. This year, Allahabad is expected to host an estimated 80 million pilgrims between January and March. (See Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival)

People come to Allahabad to wash away their sins in the sacred River Ganges. For many it's the realization of their life's goal, and they emerge feeling joyful and rejuvenated. But there is also a darker side to the world's largest religious gathering, as some take advantage of the swirling crowds to abandon elderly relatives.

"They wait for this Maha Kumbh because many people are there so nobody will know," said one human rights activist who has helped people in this predicament and who wished to remain anonymous. "Old people have become useless, they don't want to look after them, so they leave them and go."

Anshu Malviya, an Allahabad-based social worker, confirmed that both men and women have been abandoned during the religious event, though it has happened more often to elderly widows. Numbers are hard to come by, since many people genuinely become separated from their groups in the crowd, and those who have been abandoned may not admit it. But Malviya estimates that dozens of people are deliberately abandoned during a Maha Kumbh Mela, at a very rough guess.

To a foreigner, it seems puzzling that these people are not capable of finding their own way home. Malviya smiles. "If you were Indian," he said, "you wouldn't be puzzled. Often they have never left their homes. They are not educated, they don't work. A lot of the time they don't even know which district their village is in."

Once the crowd disperses and the volunteer-run lost-and-found camps that provide temporary respite have packed away their tents, the abandoned elderly may have the option of entering a government-run shelter. Conditions are notoriously bad in these homes, however, and many prefer to remain on the streets, begging. Some gravitate to other holy cities such as Varanasi or Vrindavan where, if they're lucky, they are taken in by temples or charity-funded shelters.

In these cities, they join a much larger population, predominantly women, whose families no longer wish to support them, and who have been brought there because, in the Hindu religion, to die in these holy cities is to achieve moksha or Nirvana. Mohini Giri, a Delhi-based campaigner for women's rights and former chair of India's National Commission for Women, estimates that there are 10,000 such women in Varanasi and 16,000 in Vrindavan.

But even these women are just the tip of the iceberg, says economist Jean Drèze of the University of Allahabad, who has campaigned on social issues in India since 1979. "For one woman who has been explicitly parked in Vrindavan or Varanasi, there are a thousand or ten thousand who are living next door to their sons and are as good as abandoned, literally kept on a starvation diet," he said.

According to the Hindu ideal, a woman should be looked after until the end of her life by her male relatives—with responsibility for her shifting from her father to her husband to her son. But Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University who published a study of widows in India in 2001, found that the reality was often very different.

Chen's survey of 562 widows of different ages revealed that about half of them were supporting themselves in households that did not include an adult male—either living alone, or with young children or other single women. Many of those who did live with their families reported harassment or even violence.

According to Drèze, the situation hasn't changed since Chen's study, despite the economic growth that has taken place in India, because widows remain vulnerable due to their lack of education and employment. In 2010, the World Bank reported that only 29 percent of the Indian workforce was female. Moreover, despite changes in the law designed to protect women's rights to property, in practice sons predominantly inherit from their parents—leaving women eternally dependent on men. In a country where 37 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, elderly dependent relatives fall low on many people's lists of priorities.

This bleak picture is all too familiar to Devshran Singh, who oversees the Durga Kund old people's home in Varanasi. People don't pay toward the upkeep of their relatives, he said, and they rarely visit. In one case, a doctor brought an old woman to Durga Kund claiming she had been abandoned. After he had gone, the woman revealed that the doctor was her son. "In modern life," said Singh, "people don't have time for their elderly."

Drèze is currently campaigning for pensions for the elderly, including widows. Giri is working to make more women aware of their rights. And most experts agree that education, which is increasingly accessible to girls in India, will help improve women's plight. "Education is a big force of social change," said Drèze. "There's no doubt about that."

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Fiery Last-Lap Daytona Crash Injures 28 Fans

A fiery last-lap crash at the Daytona International Speedway injured a number of spectators today, who were seen being carried away from the stands on stretchers.

A total of 28 fans were injured, with 14 transported to hospitals and 14 treated at the speedway, Dayton president Joie Chitwood III. All NASCAR drivers involved in the crash have been treated and released, Chitwood said.

ESPN reported that one of the spectators taken to the hospital was on the way to surgery with head trauma.

The 12-car crash happened moments before the end of the Nationwide race, and on the eve of the Daytona 500, one of NASCAR's biggest events.

The crash was apparently triggered when driver Regan Smith's car, which was being tailed by Brad Keselowski on his back bumper, spun to the right and shot up the track. Smith had been in the lead and said after the crash he had been trying to throw a "block."

Rookie Kyle Larson's car slammed into the wall that separates the track from the grandstands, causing his No. 32 car to go airborne and erupt in flames.

When a haze of smoke cleared and Larson's car came to a stop, he jumped out uninjured.

His engine and one of his wheels were sitting in a walkway of the grandstand.

"I was getting pushed from behind," Larson told ESPN. "Before I could react, it was too late."

Driver Michael Annett was taken to the hospital after he slammed head-on into a barrier during the chaos. NASCAR officials told ESPN the driver was awake and alert.

Tony Stewart pulled out the win, but in victory lane, what would have been a celebratory mood was tempered by concern for the injured fans.

"We've always known this is a dangerous sport," Stewart said. 'But it's hard when the fans get caught up in it."

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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth.

A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process splits water and produces oxygen gas. But some groups of bacteria oxidise substances like iron instead – a form of photosynthesis that doesn't generate oxygen. Evolutionary biologists think these non-oxygen-generating forms of photosynthesis evolved first, giving rise to oxygen-generating photosynthesis sometime before the Earth's atmosphere gained oxygen 2.4 billion years ago (New Scientist, 8 December 2012, p 12).

But when did non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis evolve? Fossilised microbial mats that formed in shallow water 3.4 billion years ago in what is now South Africa show the chemical fingerprints of the process. However, geologists have long wondered whether even earlier evidence exists.

The world's oldest sedimentary rocks – a class of rock that can preserve evidence of life – are a logical place to look, says Andrew Czaja of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. These rocks, which are found in Greenland and date back almost 3.8 billion years, contain vast deposits of iron oxide that are a puzzle. "What could have formed these giant masses of oxidised iron?" asks Czaja.

To investigate, he analysed the isotopic composition of samples taken from the oxidised iron. He found that some isotopes of iron were more common than they would be if oxygen gas was indiscriminately oxidising the metal. Moreover, the exact isotopic balance varied subtly from point to point in the rock.

Both findings make sense if photosynthetic bacteria were responsible for the iron oxide, says Czaja. That's because these microbes preferentially oxidise only a small fraction of the dissolved iron, and the iron isotopes they prefer vary slightly as environmental conditions change (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, doi.org/kh5). His findings suggest that this form of photosynthesis appeared about 370 million years earlier than we thought.

It is "the best current working hypothesis for the origin of these deposits", says Mike Tice of Texas A&M University in College Station – one of the team who analysed the 3.4-billion-year-old microbial mats from South Africa.

William Martin at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, agrees. "Anoxygenic photosynthesis is a good candidate for the isotope evidence they see," he says. "Had these fascinating results been collected on Mars, the verdict of the jury would surely remain open," says Martin Brasier at the University of Oxford. "But [on Earth] opinion seems to be swinging in the direction of non-oxygen-generating photosynthesis during the interval from 3.8 to 2.9 billion years ago."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Photosynthesis has truly ancient origins"

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US budget cuts can be avoided: Obama

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama insisted Friday that mandatory government budget cuts set to kick in on March 1 -- known as the sequester -- were not "inevitable."

The cuts to defence and domestic spending were mandated in an agreement between Obama and his Republican foes to end a previous budget battle.

"I never think that anything is inevitable, we always have the opportunity to make the right decisions," Obama told reporters following a White House meeting with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

"Hope springs eternal."

The consequences of the threatened sequester were supposed to be so punishing that Democrats and Republicans would have no choice but to reach a deal to reduce the deficit.

Obama also attempted to reassure financial markets in case the cuts do go forward.

"Unlike issues like the debt ceiling, the sequester going into effect will not threaten the world financial system, it's not the equivalent of the US defaulting on its obligations," Obama said.

"What it does mean though is that if the US is growing slower, other countries are growing slower."

Obama wants to use a "balanced" mix of spending cuts and tax revenue increases achieved by closing loopholes used by the wealthy to cut the US deficit, and says he will not sign a bill that harms the middle class.

Republicans, who lost a previous showdown with Obama over raising tax rates for the rich, say the debate over hiking taxes is closed.

They say they are willing to close loopholes, but only in the context of a sweeping reform of the tax code, and maintain that Obama wants to use proceeds from any immediate revenue rises for more bloated government spending.

Hundreds of thousands of public employees and private contractors are threatened by the cuts.

- AFP/jc

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NYPD creates special team to recover stolen Apple devices

Smartphones are so common now that it's easy to forget criminals will steal them, if you give them the opportunity.

Apple device thefts in New York got so bad that the NYPD created a dedicated team to recovering stolen iDevices, the New York Post reported today.

The team works with Apple to obtain ID numbers -- known as an International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number -- for devices and track down the stolen goods.

The number of thefts in the city soared last year, according to a report from NYPD. The department found that iPhone and
iPad thefts rose 40 percent from a period of eight months. As of September, 11,447 cases were reported.

These numbers for "Apple picking" will continue to rise as smartphones and
tablets become ubiquitous with most day-to-day activities. Using apps on phones and tablets to check for news updates, weather reports, etc., are common for bustling metropolises like New York City, and elsewhere.

A Wall Street Journal reporter chronicled his own experience with an iPad theft on the subway that left him with a broken jaw. In Tech-savvy San Francisco one theft lead to a police foot chase and shots fired.

Consumers should take the proper precautions in case they loose their phones to the black market, where phones can fetch hundreds of dollars. Securing your phone with a good passcode and signing up for services like Apple's Find My iPhone service could offer piece of mind.

Thieves like to target those who are preoccupied with their phones, opting to grab the devices from owners' hands and then bolt. If you do end up a victim, police say it's best not to try and stop the criminals. Here is the NYPD's PSA alerting people to some common iDevice theft situations:

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Space Pictures This Week: Space Rose, Ghostly Horses

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Space Rose

  Image courtesy T.A. Rector and H. Schweiker, UAA/WIYN/NOAO/NSF

  Planetary nebula Sh2-174 "blooms" like a rose in a picture released this week by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).

  Nebulae are created when low-mass stars shed their outer layers at the end of their lives. The core of the dying star, called a white dwarf, usually remains at the center of the nebula.

  But not so for the oddly positioned Sh2-174: Its white dwarf is located in the right part of the nebula, in the blue gas pictured above. (See more nebula pictures.)

  Published February 22, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Universal Delivery

  Photograph courtesy NASA

  An unpiloted resupply vehicle snapped this picture as it approached the International Space Station this week.

  The vehicle provided the 34 crew members on board with essential supplies, including oxygen, water, spare parts, even logistics equipment—2.9 tons of supplies in all. (See pictures of early U.S. spaceflight.)

  Published February 22, 2013

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Everglades of Europe

  Image courtesy Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, EO-1/NASA/USGS

  The Danube cuts a jade path across part of the Danube Biosphere Reserve in the Ukraine on its way to the Black Sea in an image captured February 5 by NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite.

  Europe's largest river, the Danube spans 309,447 square miles (801,463 square kilometers) and winds its way through 19 countries.

  Called the "Everglades of Europe," the Danube delta is home to more than 300 species of birds and 45 species of fish, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. (See more river pictures.)

  Published February 22, 2013

  
  











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  Bird's-Eye View

  Image by Maurizio Cabibbo, My Shot

  Photographer Maurizio Cabibbo submitted this picture of the chaotic center of the Cygnus, or Swan, constellation on February 11 to the National Geographic photo community My Shot.

  Resembling a swan flying across the night sky, Cygnus is easily seen in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, according to NASA.

  Published February 22, 2013

  
  











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  Spirit Horses

  Photograph by Andre Erlich, Your Shot

  An aurora casts a ghostly glow over horses in northern Iceland in a picture submitted to National Geographic's My Shot photography community on February 18.

  Named after Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn, the vivid beams of light from aurora borealis result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere. (See more aurora pictures: "Solar Flare Sparks 'Snakes,' 'Spears.'")

  Published February 22, 2013

  
  











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  Image courtesy SDO/NASA

  Published February 22, 2013

  
  

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Great Energy Challenge Blog

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Jodi Arias' Friends Believe in Her Innocence

Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial. They befriended Arias after she first arrived in jail and believe in her innocence.

Arias admits killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander and lying for nearly two years about it, but insists she killed Alexander in self defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.

Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video

Nevertheless, she is aware of the seriousness of her lies and deceitful behavior.

The women told ABC News that they understand that Arias needs to be punished and Arias understands that too.

"She does know that, you know, she does need to pay for the crime," Campbell said. "But I don't want her to die, and I know that she has so much to give back."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The lies that Arias admits she told to police and her family have been devastating to her, Bering said.

""She said to me, 'I wish I didn't have to have lied. That destroyed me,'" Donovan said earlier this week. "Because now when it's so important for her to be believed, she has that doubt. But as she told me on the phone yesterday, she goes, 'I have nothing to lose.' So all she can do is go out there and tell the truth."

During Arias' nine days on the stand she has described in detail the oral, anal and phone sex that she and Alexander allegedly engaged in, despite being Mormons and trying to practice chastity. She also spelled out in excruciating detail what she claimed was Alexander's growing demands for sex, loyalty and subservience along with an increasingly violent temper.

Besides her two friends, Arias' mother and sometimes her father have been sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the testimony. It's been humiliating, Bering said.

"She's horrified. There's not one ounce of her life that's not out there, that's not open to the public. She's ashamed," she said.

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Mood-sensing smartphone tells your shrink how you feel

PEOPLE with anxiety, depression or stress are often asked to record their mood changes throughout the day, helping psychologists fine-tune their treatment. But they often forget, recording only sparse information at best. Now an emotion-sensing smartphone app that automatically generates someone's "mood diary" could give psychologists all the data they need.

It's the brainchild of Matt Dobson and Duncan Barclay, founders of speech recognition firm EI Technologies, based in Saffron Walden, UK. Instead of relying on people writing diaries, the app, called Xpression, listens for telltale changes in a person's voice that indicate whether they are in one of five emotional states: calm, happy, sad, angry or anxious/frightened. It then lists a person's moods against the times they change, and automatically emails the list to their psychologist at the end of the day.

To work, the app has to be always on, listening out for the user's voice once every second, whether they are talking to family, friends, colleagues or even pets. It also listens in on phone calls. If the user is silent, the app does nothing. Crucially for the users' privacy, it doesn't record their words, instead seeking out telltale acoustic features – like pitch – that are indicative of emotional state.

This kind of emotion recognition via voice pattern already works well and is a "hot area" of research, says Stephen Cox, head of the speech processing lab at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, who is scientific adviser for the firm.

Initially, Xpression will send 200-millisecond-long acoustic snapshots to a remote server where a machine-learning system will work out a person's emotional state before sending it back to the app for storage. Factors like voice loudness, intensity, changes in pitch and speaking pace allow the system to accurately estimate somebody's emotional state. "We extract acoustic features and let the machine-learning system work it out," says Cox. This ability will be built into the app itself eventually, says Dobson.

There's a strong need for this kind of technology, says Adrian Skinner, a clinical psychologist with the UK's National Health Service in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. "With conditions like depression, people tend to stop doing things like filling in mood diaries. If this app gives us more complete diaries it could help us better find the day-to-day triggers that raise or lower a patient's mood," he says.

The firm is a finalist in a UK government competition to identify the nation's top mobile tech company, to be judged on 26 February. An insurance company has already expressed an interest in using the app to ensure the workplace stress therapy it pays for is effective. Clinical trials are due to take place later this year.

This article appeared in print under the headline "We know how you really feel"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Non-American or European Pope is good, poll finds

WASHINGTON: More than half of Catholics in the United States think it would be a good thing for the next pope to come from South America, Asia or Africa, a Pew Research Center poll said Thursday.

Another 20 per cent said it would not matter if Pope Benedict XVI's successor hails from a developing region of the world, while just 14 per cent thought it was a bad idea.

Pew's Forum on Religion and Public Life interviewed 1,504 Americans of all faiths, including 304 Catholics, shortly after the German-born pontiff's resignation announcement was made on February 11.

Fifty-one per cent of Catholic respondents said the next pope should "maintain the traditional positions of the Church."

Of those who thought he should take the Church in new directions, 15 per cent said he should get tougher on sex abuse and nine percent thought he should be more accepting of gays and marriage equality.

Just one percent believed he should be less strict about abortion.

Nearly one in four Americans are Catholics, making the Church the largest single denomination in the country -- and the United States the developed nation with the largest Catholic population.

- AFP/sf

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U.S. attorney: Criticism of Aaron Swartz prosecution is 'unfair'

Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts

(Credit:
U.S. Department of Justice)

Carmen Ortiz, the embattled U.S. attorney who charged the late activist Aaron Swartz with multiple felonies, has responded to critics by saying complaints about any prosecutorial overzealousness are "inaccurate" and "unfair."

Ortiz, 57, said in a radio interview that a wave of criticism -- which includes a congressional investigation, a court Web site hack, and a petition demanding her removal from office -- is off-base and uninformed.

"I have heard some of the claims in terms of being overzealous, or lack of supervision" of prosecutors in the office, Ortiz, who was appointed by President Obama and has previously denied any wrongdoing, told Boston's WBUR radio in an interview aired yesterday. "And I think they're actually very inaccurate. They're unfair. And they're unwarranted."

WBUR and Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly published a joint report into Ortiz's tenure that found "other prosecutions that parallel the Swartz case" that may "raise similar concerns about her hands-off leadership style, overzealousness, judgment and use of discretion at the grand jury and trial levels." In one case Ortiz's office brought, a federal judge threw out the charges against a defendant after declaring prosecutors' witnesses were so unbelievable that no jury would find them credible. In another, prosecutors accused a medical device company of defrauding surgeons but never talked to the alleged victims, who were prepared to testify for the defense.

"With respect to this notion that prosecutors pretty much run things here and that I don't make independent decisions -- that's completely absurd," Ortiz told WBUR. "We have a hierarchy of supervision. No AUSA in this office is able to bring a case, uh, just on their own." (An AUSA is an assistant U.S. attorney who reports to Ortiz.)

Swartz committed suicide on January 11 in New York. His family and friends have blamed Ortiz for filing 13 felony charges against the late activist for allegedly downloading academic journals he was authorized to access (but not access in such large quantities). "He was killed by the government," Swartz's father, Robert, said at his son's funeral.

Prosecutors accused Swartz of connecting a computer to MIT's network without authorization and retrieving more than 4 million academic journal articles from the JSTOR database. The advocacy group Demand Progress, which Swartz had helped create and which helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act a year ago, likened it to "trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library."

At the time the charges were filed, Ortiz compared Swartz to a common criminal in a press release. "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar," Ortiz said. Last month, less than three months before his criminal trial was set to begin, Ortiz's office formally rejected a deal that would have kept Swartz out of prison. Two days later, Swartz killed himself.

If Swartz had stolen a $100 hard drive with the JSTOR articles, it would have been a misdemeanor offense that would have yielded probation or community service. But the sweeping nature of federal computer crime laws allowed Ortiz and Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, who reportedly wanted a high-profile computer crime conviction, to pursue felony charges -- even though local prosecutors reportedly were content with a stern warning.

The Boston U.S. Attorney's office was looking for "some juicy-looking computer crime cases, and Aaron's case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill," Elliot Peters, Swartz's attorney at the Keker & Van Nest law firm, told the Huffington Post. Heymann, Peters said, thought the Swartz case "was going to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in the newspaper."

Harvard law professor Larry Lessig, who knew Swartz and worked with him, gave a lecture this week titled "Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age." In it, Lessig called for a reform of U.S. computer crime laws, saying that "obviously first we need to fix" them, but also: "We have to fix dumb copyright. We're here in part because of dumb copyright laws."

In the WBUR interview, Ortiz said she didn't want to discuss Swartz's case in detail because of the congressional investigation. But she did say, in response to criticisms that Swartz was facing the possibility of decades in prison: "I will talk to you about proportion because that is important. We don't take our responsibility lightly. We try to, you know, do the right thing. We strive to do justice."

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Oldest Known Wild Bird Hatches Chick at 62

Wisdom, the oldest known wild bird, has yet another feather in her cap—a new chick.

The Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis)—62 years old at least—recently hatched a healthy baby in the U.S. Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, her sixth in a row and possibly the 35th of her lifetime, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) North American Bird Banding Program. (Related: "51-Year-Old Albatross Breaks N. American Age Record [2003].")

But Wisdom's longevity would be unknown if it weren't for a longtime bird-banding project founded by USGS research wildlife biologist Chandler Robbins.

Now 94, Robbins was the first scientist to band Wisdom in 1956, who at the time was "just another nesting bird," he said. Over the next ten years, Robbins banded tens of thousands of black-footed albatrosses (Phoebastria nigripes) and Laysan albatrosses as part of a project to study the behavior of the large seabirds, which at the time were colliding with U.S. Navy aircraft.

Robbins didn't return to the tiny Pacific island—now part of the U.S. Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument—until 2002, when he "recaptured as many birds as I could in hopes that some of them would be the old-timers."

Indeed, Robbins did recapture Wisdom—but he didn't know it until he got back to his office at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, and checked her band number in the database.

"That was real exciting, because we didn't think the chances of finding one that old would be that good," Robbins said Wednesday in an interview from his office at the Patuxent center, where he still works.

Chandler Robbins counts birds in Maryland's Patuxent Research Refuge.

Photograph by David H. Wells, Corbis

Albatrosses No Bird Brains

Bigger birds such as the albatross generally live longer than smaller ones: The oldest bird in the Guinness Book of Animal Records, a Siberian white crane (Leucogeranus leucogeranus), lived an unconfirmed 82 years. Captive parrots are known to live into their 80s. (See National Geographic's bird pictures.)

The Laysan albatross spends most of the year at sea, nesting on the Midway Atoll (map) in the colder months. Birds start nesting around five years of age, which is how scientists knew that Wisdom was at least five years old in 1956.

Because albatrosses defend their nests, banding them doesn't require a net or a trap as in the case of other bird species, Robbins said—but they're far from tame.

"They've got a long, sharp bill and long, sharp claws—they could do a job on you if you're not careful how to handle them," said Robbins, who estimates he's banded a hundred thousand birds.

For instance, "when you're not looking, the black-footed albatross will sneak up from behind and bite you in the seat of the pants."

But Robbins has a fondness for albatrosses, and Wisdom in particular, especially considering the new dangers that these birds face.

Navy planes are no longer a problem—albatross nesting dunes were moved farther from the runway—but the birds can ingest floating bits of plastic that now inundate parts of the Pacific, get hooked in longlines meant for fish, and be poisoned by lead paint that's still on some of Midway Atoll's buildings. (Also see "Birds in 'Big Trouble' Due to Drugs, Fishing, More.")

That Wisdom survived so many years avoiding all those hazards and is still raising young is quite extraordinary, Robbins said.

"Those birds have a tremendous amount of knowledge in their little skulls."

"Simply Incredible"

Wisdom's accomplishments have caught the attention of other scientists, in particular Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer in Residence, who said by email that Wisdom is a "symbol of hope for the ocean." (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

Earle visited Wisdom at her nest in January 2012, where she "appeared serenely indifferent to our presence," Earle wrote in the fall 2012 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

"I marveled at the perils she had survived during six decades, including the first ten or so years before she found a lifetime mate. She learned to fly and navigate over thousands of miles to secure enough small fish and squid to sustain herself, and every other year or so, find her way back to the tiny island and small patch of grass where a voraciously hungry chick waited for special delivery meals."

Indeed, Wisdom has logged an estimated two to three million miles since 1956—or four to six trips from Earth to the moon and back, according to the USGS. (Related: "Albatross's Effortless Flight Decoded—May Influence Future Planes.")

Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the North American Bird Banding Program, called Wisdom's story "simply incredible."

"If she were human, she would be eligible for Medicare in a couple years—yet she is still regularly raising young and annually circumnavigating the Pacific Ocean," he said in a statement.

Bird's-Eye View

As for Robbins, he said he'd "love to get out to Midway again." But in the meantime, he's busy going through thousands of bird records in an effort to trace their life histories.

There's much more to learn: For instance, no one has ever succeeded in putting a radio transmitter on an albatross to follow it throughout its entire life-span, Robbins noted.

"It would be [an] exciting project for someone to undertake, but I'm 94 years old," he said, chuckling. "It wouldn't do much for me to start a project at my age."

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Las Vegas Shooting Launches Multi-State Manhunt

An argument in the valet area of a Las Vegas hotel led to a deadly drive-by shooting on the occupants of a Maserati on Vegas' glitzy strip, initiating a multi-state manhunt for the black Range Rover from which the shots were fired.

Three people were left dead in the attack, including two who died when their taxi was struck by the careening sports car and exploded into flames.

"What happened is not just tragic, but underscores the level of violence we see sometimes here in Las Vegas as well as across America," Las Vegas Metropolitan Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at a news conference today. "Clearly, the suspects in this shooting have no regard for the lives and safety of others."

The altercation took place in the valet area of the Aria resort and casino. Gillespie said there is currently "no indication" what the squabble was about.

Gillespie said that authorities do not know how many people are in the SUV, but that they are considered armed and dangerous. He warned members of the public to stay away from it.

"You should not take action," he said. "Instead, call your local police department and alert them to the whereabouts of the suspect vehicle."

Authorities in Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California are all on alert for the car.

"These individuals will be found," Gillespie said. "They will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun/AP Photo

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The Range Rover SUV shot at two people in the Maserati, which caused a multi-car crash. Police have not released the model of the Maserati, but the price of a new Maserati ranges from $123,000 to $142,000.

Police said that they believe a group of men riding in a black Range Rover Sport SUV pulled up alongside the Maserati around 4:20 a.m. today and fired shots into the car, striking the driver and passenger, according to Officer Jose Hernandez of the Las Vegas Metropolitan police department.

The Maserati then swerved through an intersection, hitting at least four other cars. One car that was struck, a taxi with a driver and passenger in it, caught on fire and burst into flames, trapping both occupants, Hernandez said.

The SUV then fled the scene, according to cops.

Gillespie said investigators are in the process of gathering video footage from hotels, casinos and the taxi cabs that were at the intersection.

The driver of the Maserati died from his gunshot wounds at University Medical Center shortly after the shooting, according to Sgt. John Sheahan.

The driver and passenger of the taxi both died in the car fire.

At least three individuals, including the passenger of the Maserati, were injured during the shooting and car crashes and taken to UMC hospital for treatment.

Authorities said the Maserati passenger, identified only as a man, sustained only a minor injury to his arm. He is speaking to and cooperating with police.

They do not yet know whether the cars had local plates or were from out of state.

No bystanders were hit by gunfire, Hernandez said.

"We're currently looking for a black Range Rover Sport, with large black rims and some sort of dealership advertising or advertisement plates," Hernandez said. "This is an armed and dangerous vehicle."

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority had no immediate comment about the safety of tourists in the wake of the shooting today.

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Higgs may spell doom, unless supersymmetry saves us

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

(Image: CERN)

Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced on its point.

"It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable," Joseph Lykken, of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, said on Monday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At some point, billions of years from now, it's all going to be wiped out."

Physicists have been wringing their hands about this scenario since 1982, when theorists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek published a paper about it in Nature, NBC News points out. The pair showed that the vacuum of space can be in different energy states, and it will be most stable at its lowest energy. Trouble arises if we're not there yet, and we're inhabiting a temporarily stable state that should ultimately collapse.

"The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us," Lykken said at AAAS.

Enter the Higgs boson, the particle form of the field that gives mass to several fundamental particles. The Higgs field permeates the vacuum of space, which means the mass of the boson and the stability of the vacuum are closely intertwined. Theory predicted that if the Higgs boson is heavier than about 129 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), the universe should be on safe footing.

But in July 2012 physicists at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland announced that a particle closely matching the Higgs had been found by experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The much celebrated particle has a mass of about 126 GeV - light enough to raise fears of instability.

There is still hope for the universe as we know it. Some theorists pointed out that the relationship between the Higgs mass and the vacuum of space depends on the mass of a particle called the top quark. If the top quark's mass is different than we think it is, stability might reign.

There are also anomalies with the Higgs measurement, like the fact that it decays into photons more often than predicted. That hints we may yet find particles from the theory of supersymmetry, which says each ordinary particle has heavier "superpartners". If the Higgs has such a relative, it might save us from destruction. But some of these predicted particles, particularly the superpartners of the top quark, can push the universe back into instability.

The worries may remain unconfirmed for a while. The LHC is shutting down for a two-year break so engineers can prepare the machine to shoot higher-energy particle beams, which are needed to probe for superpartners.

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Sony bills coming PS4 console as future of gaming

NEW YORK: Sony unveiled a new-generation PlayStation 4 (PS4) system on Wednesday and laid out its vision for the "future of gaming" in a world rich with mobile gadgets and play streamed from the Internet cloud.

At a press event in New York, computer entertainment unit chief Andrew House said PS4 "represents a significant shift from thinking of PlayStation as a box or console to thinking of the PlayStation 4 as a leading place for play."

PS4 was designed to get to know players, ideally to the point of being able to predict which games people will buy and have them pre-loaded and ready to go.

It also allows live streaming of gameplay in real-time, letting friends virtually peer over one another's shoulders and even letting game makers to act as "directors" guiding players along.

Sony has also given a "green light" to building "the most powerful network for gaming in the world", according to David Perry, chief of Gaikai cloud gaming company purchased last year by Sony.

Gaikai specialises in letting people play video games streamed from the Internet "cloud" instead of buying titles on disks popped into consoles or computers.

"By combining PlayStation 4, PlayStation Network and social platforms, our vision is to create the first social network with meaning dedicated to games," Perry said during the event.

A button on the PS4 controller will let players instantly stream in-game action to friends in real time, and even allow someone to transfer control to more capable allies when stuck, according to Perry.

He expressed a vision of letting people access and play video games old or new on the Internet using PS4, smartphones, tablets or PS Vita handheld devices.

"We are exploring opportunity enabled by cloud technology with a long-term vision of making PlayStation technology available on any device," Perry said.

"This would fundamentally change the concept of game longevity, making any game new or old available to get up and running on any device, anywhere."

Sony needs to adapt to changing lifestyles while not alienating video game lovers devoted to its hardware.

Low-cost or free games on smartphones or tablet computers are increasing the pressure on video game companies to deliver experiences worth players' time and money.

With the press event still in progress, Sony had yet to indicate availability or pricing for the PS4. New-generation consoles are typically priced in the $400 to $500 range, and blockbuster game titles hit the market at $60 each.

-AFP/gn

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Curiosity's drill delivers first sample in major milestone

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the first sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill. The image was taken after the sample was transferred from the drill to the rover's scoop. In planned subsequent steps, the sample will be sieved, and portions of it delivered to the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.

(Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS )

The Curiosity rover's powerful impact drill has successfully collected its first subsurface sample, about a tablespoon of powdered rock that will be fed into the spacecraft's on-board laboratory instruments for detailed chemical analysis, project officials said Wednesday.

The drill is the last major system on the rover to be tested since landing in Gale Crater last August and the successful collection of subsurface material marks a major milestone in Curiosity's quest to find signs of past or present habitability.

"Curiosity's first drill hole at the John Klein site is a historic moment for the MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) mission," said Louise Jandura, chief engineer of Curiosity's sample system. "This is the first time any robot, fixed or mobile, has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.

"In fact, this is the first time any rover has drilled into a rock to collect a sample anywhere but on Earth. In the five-decade history of the Space Age, this is indeed a rare event."

The drill, mounted on the end of Curiosity's robot arm, was used to bore 2.5 inches into a rock for the first time on February 8. Photographs beamed back to Earth on Wednesday showed a sample of pulverized light gray rock collected from the interior of the target bedrock resting in a scoop on the rover.

The scoop is part of Curiosity's Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis, or CHIMRA. Over the next few days, the sample will be vibrated over a sieve to screen out any particles larger than 150 microns across, or six-thousandths of an inch.

A portion of the fine-grained result will be delivered to the Chemistry and Mineralogy, or CheMin, suite of instruments for a detailed chemical analysis. Another set of instruments, known as the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, package is designed to look for signs of organic compounds like those necessary for life as it is known on Earth.

"Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time that the drill successfully acquired sample as it was boring down into the rock," said Scott McCloskey, rover planner and drill systems engineer. "We estimate that we collected about a tablespoon of powder, which meets our expectations and is a great result. We're all very happy to get this confirmation and relieved that the drilling was a complete success."

So far, Curiosity is chalking up a near flawless record with no technical problems of any significance.

At the center of this image from NASA's Curiosity rover is the hole in a rock called "John Klein" where the rover conducted its first sample drilling on Mars. The drilling took place on February 8, 2013, or Sol 182, Curiosity's 182nd Martian day of operations. Several preparatory activities with the drill preceded this operation, including a test that produced the shallower hole on the right two days earlier, but the deeper hole resulted from the first use of the drill for rock sample collection.

(Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS )

But engineers have decided to change the way they operate the rover's sample acquisition system in the wake of problems with welds on a test unit sieve at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The problem showed up only after extensive operation, and troubleshooters concluded the unit could successfully operate for a full year longer than Curiosity's planned two-year mission. A second test unit showed no signs of trouble and the sieve aboard Curiosity is working normally.

But engineers opted to take a conservative approach, deciding to operate Curiosity's sieve hardware only when absolutely necessary.

"Given this kind of reason to be cautious, based on what our test program is telling us that hey, there might be an issue here, it may or may not apply to flight, we're taking the conservative tack," said Daniel Limonadi, lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system.

"We're reducing the amount of wear and tear we're putting on the hardware. We've shortened our sieving time...to help minimize whatever might be going on and extend its life."

Joel Hurowitz, sampling system scientist for Curiosity, said the science team is eager to finally get the opportunity to examine rock samples that have not been subjected to surface weathering.

"This drilling operation we just completed allows us to get beneath the surface and analyze for the first time rock samples that have not been exposed to the effects of the Martian surface environment and truly understand the chemistry and mineralogy of a Martian rock," he said.

"The science team is just superexcited to find out what CheMin and SAM will have to say about the mineralogy and chemistry of this material and what it means for the geologic history and habitability of Gale Crater."

Jandura said the ability to drill is a major step forward in the Mars exploration program.

"It allows us to go beyond the surface layer of the rock, unlocking a kind of time capsule of evidence about the state of Mars going back 3 or 4 billion years," she said. "Because the drill's on a rover, the rock choices are plentiful."

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NASA's Mars Rover Makes Successful First Drill

For the first time ever, people have drilled into a rock on Mars, collecting the powdered remains from the hole for analysis.

Images sent back from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Wednesday confirmed that the precious sample is being held by the rover's scoop, and will soon be delivered to two miniature chemical labs to undergo an unprecedented analysis. (Related: "Mars Rover Curiosity Completes First Full Drill.")

To the delight of the scientists, the rock powder has come up gray and not the ubiquitous red of the dust that covers the planet. The gray rock, they believe, holds a lot of potential to glean information about conditions on an early Mars. (See more Mars pictures.)

"We're drilling into rock that's a time capsule, rocks that are potentially ancient," said sampling-system scientist Joel Hurowitz during a teleconference from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

A Place to Drill

The site features flat bedrock, often segmented into squares, with soil between the sections and many round gray nodules and white mineral veins.

Hurowitz said that the team did not attempt to drill into the minerals or the gray balls, but the nodules are so common that they likely hit some as they drilled down 2.5 inches (6.3 centimeters).

In keeping with the hypothesis that the area was once under water, Hurowitz said the sample "has the potential of telling us about multiple interactions of water and rock."

The drill, located at the end of a seven-foot (two-meter) arm, requires precision maneuvering in its placement and movement, and so its successful initial use was an exciting and welcome relief. The rover has been on Mars since August, and it took six months to find the right spot for that first drill. (Watch video of the Mars rover Curiosity.)

The flat drilling area is in the lower section of Yellowknife Bay, which Curiosity has been exploring for more than a month. What was previously identified by Curiosity scientists as the dry bed of a once-flowing river or stream appears to fan out into the Yellowknife area.

The bedrock of the site—named after deceased Curiosity deputy project manager John Klein—is believed to be siltstone or mudstone. Scientists said the veins of white minerals are probably calcium sulfate or gypsum, but the grey nodules remain something of a mystery.

Triumph

To the team that designed and operates the drill, the results were a triumph, as great as the much-heralded landing of Curiosity on the red planet. With more than a hundred maneuvers in its repertoire, the drill is unique in its capabilities and complexities. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

Sample system chief engineer Louise Jandura, who has worked on the drill for eight years, said the Curosity team had made eight different drills before settling on the one now on the rover. The team tested each drill by boring 1,200 holes on 20 types of rock on Earth.

She called the successful drilling "historic" because it gives scientists unprecedented access to material that has not been exposed to the intense weathering and radiation processes that affect the Martian surface.

Mini-laboratories

The gray powder will be routed to the two most sophisticated instruments on Curiosity—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin).

SAM, the largest and most complex instrument onboard, operates with two ovens that can heat the sample up to 1,800°F (982°C), turning the elements and compounds in the rock into gases that can then be identified. SAM can also determine whether any carbon-based organic material is present.

Organics are the chemical building blocks of life on Earth. They are known to regularly land on Mars via meteorites and finer material that rains down on all planets.

But researchers suspect the intense radiation on the Martian surface destroys any organics on the surface. Scientists hope that organics within Martian rocks are protected from that radiation.

CheMin shoots an X-ray beam at its sample and can analyze the mineral content of the rock. Minerals provide a durable record of environmental conditions over the eons, including information about possible ingredients and energy sources for life.

Both SAM and CheMin received samples of sandy soil scooped from the nearby Rocknest outcrop in October. SAM identified organic material, but scientists are still trying to determine whether any of it is Martian or the byproduct of organics inadvertently brought to Mars by the rover. (See "Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds.")

In the next few days, CheMin will be the first to receive samples of the powdered rock, and then SAM. Given the complexity of the analysis, and the track record seen with other samples, it will likely be weeks before results are announced.

The process of drilling and collecting the results was delayed by several glitches that required study and work-arounds. One involved drill software and the other involved a test-bed problem with a sieve that is part of the process of delivering samples to the instruments.

Lead systems engineer Daniel Limonadi said that while there was no indication the sieve on Mars was malfunctioning, they had become more conservative in its use because of the test bed results. (Related: "A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?")

Author of the National Geographic e-book Mars Landing 2012, Marc Kaufman has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including the past 12 as a science and space writer, foreign correspondent, and editor for the Washington Post. He is also author of First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, published in 2011, and has spoken extensively to crowds across the United States and abroad about astrobiology. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife, Lynn Litterine.

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Armstrong Snubs Offer From Anti-Doping Officials

Lance Armstrong has turned down what may be his last chance at reducing his lifetime sporting ban.

Armstrong has already admitted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey to a career fueled by doping and deceit. But to get a break from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, all he had to do was tell his story to those who police sports doping. The deadline was today, and Armstrong now says he won't do it.

"For several reasons, Lance will not participate in USADA's efforts to selectively conduct American prosecutions that only demonize selected individuals while failing to address the 95 percent of the sport over which USADA has no jurisdiction," said Tim Herman, Armstrong's longtime lawyer. "Lance is willing to cooperate fully and has been very clear: He will be the first man through the door, and once inside will answer every question, at an international tribunal formed to comprehensively address pro cycling."

But the "international tribunal" Armstrong is anxious to cooperate with has one major problem: It doesn't exist.

The UCI, cycling's governing body, has talked about forming a "truth and reconciliation" commission, but the World Anti-Doping Agency has resisted, citing serious concerns about the UCI and its leadership.

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Livestrong, Elizabeth Kreutz/AP Photo

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U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials seemed stunned by Armstrong's decision simply to walk away.

"Over the last few weeks, he [Armstrong] has led us to believe that he wanted to come in and assist USADA, but was worried of potential criminal and civil liability if he did so," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "Today, we learned from the media that Mr. Armstrong is choosing not to come in and be truthful and that he will not take the opportunity to work toward righting his wrongs in sport."

Armstrong's ongoing saga plays out amid a backdrop of serious legal problems.

Sources believe one reason Armstrong wants to testify to an international tribunal, rather than USADA, is because perjury charges don't apply if Armstrong lies to a foreign agency, they told ABC News.

While Armstrong has admitted doping, he has not given up any details, including the people and methods required to pull off one of the greatest scandals in all of sport.

Armstrong is facing several multimillion-dollar lawsuits right now, but his biggest problems may be on the horizon. As ABC News first reported, a high-level source said a criminal investigation is ongoing. And the Department of Justice also reportedly is considering joining a whistleblower lawsuit claiming the U.S. Postal Service was defrauded out of millions of dollars paid to sponsor Armstrong's cycling team.

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